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Archive for March, 2007

The school Easter holiday is upon us, 16 days of child at home (mind you she’s been at home most of the past half-term). I’ve just been out to my studio to collect the afternooons work and the bunch of beads that I batch annealed with them. The batch that I annealed today had already been through the cycle about 3 times but every time something went wrong, and now they’re done, woo hoo. Now I have to clean them…..yuk. I still have another 4 skewers of beads to anneal, but I need to remember not to swtich the strip light on or off in the studio or the programme will go nuts (the kiln runs now but goes wrong when the leckle tricity spikes).

I’ve got so many jobs on my list that need doing that sometimes I feel like Earl Hicky on ‘My name is Earl’. It’s just so nice to be able to cross items off sometimes. I managed to knock 4 things off this evening while Rick cooked. Maybe he should cook every night and I should use that time to catch up?

Hasn’t it been a lovely day? The weather has been gorgeous. I sat in my studio this morning with my fleece and all my thermals on and made a few beads (still vermiculite), gradually getting hotter and hotter, having to strip off layers as I went. I also managed to get my first glass hole in my new pink beadmaking fleece bargain from Millets. I look like Obi-Wan Kenobi in it with it’s voluminous hood, or like I’m in a short dressing gown ready for bed.

Rick is busy working on my kiln again at the moment, we had to buy a new part and we’ve found out what’s going wrong. It may be a couple more days before it’s completely sorted, so my bead making is still rather restricted regarding what I can do and putting any sets together for sale. Of course we’ve also got the school Easter holiday looming up this weekend which will also put the Kaibosh on my bead making activities.

I managed 3 (or was it 2?) torching sessions this week, only an hour and a bit each but it helped. Both times though the kiln crashed, hopefully Rick is getting to the bottom of it. I have to say all this is very upsetting, it seems like the odds of beadmaking are stacked against me at the moment, as whenever I get torchtime something goes wrong (kiln each time) or something else urgent comes up. To say it’s driving me nuts would be an understatement.

All this is very unsettling, and I have to say it doesn’t help me much, especially as I’m feeling so distracted with my daughter at home most of the time. It’s been a very frustrating couple of months, I can only hope that I can work like a superwoman after Easter. Maybe I should write a plan (cunning) so I can do everything I need to in the best time. I’m off now to nip out and collect my slowly cooled but not annealed beads. lol.

Yo ho, another week almost gone since I blogged. I still don’t have much time to make beads and even when I do I have something of a kiln crisis at the moment, and I’m having to cool my beads in Vermiculite and haven’t been able to anneal any for a few weeks. The second kiln (my Chilli Pepper) was supposed to be a backup but won’t work in my studio as it is at the moment. Hmmmm. So it’s a bit of a stale mate at the moment.

Last week was a very busy week for me, with 2 days lampwork tuition (always very enjoyable), preparaton for my daughters party and then the party itself, with some visitors who stayed until midnight (it’s OK, they were invited to stay longer!). I’m still trying to recover from all the physical effort. I hope to get some beadmaking time tommorrow if all goes well, and I must remember to nudge Rick to take another look at my original kiln. I hope normal service will be resumed soon, but it will probably be after the Easter hols. Bye for now.

Hellooo, a quick hi cos I’m heading off to bed in a mo. I’m gradually getting back in the swing of things, but it’s a bit difficult with my daughter still not at school full time. She’s done 3 mornings so far this week, and hopefully will try all day Friday if she doesn’t get too tired before then. I’m finding it very hard to settle to anything with her health still a major issue, and also having her around so much. Still she’s improving all the time, but I still am amazed how long it’s all taking.

Talking of our daughter, she was 8 today. It seems such a short time ago since she was born but also a long one in a nice way. I had the day off, and popped into town to do some party shopping and get some bits to make and decorate a cake for her today. And here it is, very rushed in the icing department because we were going out, I did the most of the cake, and the white icing, and my daughter cut out and stuck on the flowers.

Life is sweet. Do you know I had just 1 hour and 10 minutes making beadies and I feel so much better for it. I’m using my vermiculite today, I just don’t trust my kilns at the moment. Rick needs to plug his computer into the controller and watch what happens before I put anymore beads in to anneal.

And what a lovely day it is today, I’ve done two loads of washing and one is on the airer outside in the sunshine. Even my daughter exclaimed how nice it was outside when I walked her to school this afternoon for her first proper afternoon back. Hopefully I’ll get to play for a short while tommorrow as well. I can but hope.

I’m still on enforced holiday, or ‘looking after convalescing child’, so still no new beadies. Well, that’s not strictly true, I did have a session Friday evening, quite a good one where I made the beads I needed for that Christmas present, and where I annealed my experiments from last Sunday. Unfortunately the kiln fairy was not smiling on me and I’ve ended up with slumped and deformed beads with decorative bits of kiln fluff attractively embedded into the flat sides (no I didn’t make them that way). I wonder if it had anything to do with the impending lunar eclipse?

Hopefully my daughter will be back at school next week, but probably not full time, so I’ll still have problems fitting in bead making. I had no idea it would be like this and it’s been quite a shock to me, but we are getting towards the end of it now (famous last words) and I’m just about resigned to how the next few weeks are going to go. It’ll probably be the Easter hols by the time we get back to normal!

Talking of the Lunar eclipse, did you see it? I watched from when the partial eclipse began through totality (although we were in the car during the whole of totality) then until the second partial eclipse ended, about 1:11am. Wasn’t it gorgeous, the blood red moon was just awesome and a real delight to look at. Gazing at the sky I really felt like I was in outer space.